Must Read Op-Eds May 12, 2011

Mr. Gingrich’s real liability among the conservative and fundamentalist groups that dominate the Republican primaries is his personal history of infidelity that led to two sordid divorces. (Much of which took place while he was denouncing President Bill Clinton for moral transgressions.) That may explain his endless calls to restore Judeo-Christian values. … It is not difficult to know what Newt Gingrich stands for, and to find it repellent.

Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million, propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies. Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own taxpayer-financed charter schools. … When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t think we envisioned it going into corporate profits.

WALL STREET, HELD ACCOUNTABLE EDITORIALNEW YORK TIMESIt’s common to sniff illegal insider trading, but hard to prove it in court because it requires proof of intentional or knowing wrongdoing. Prosecutors must show that trades were based on material, nonpublic information knowingly used. Mr. [Raj]Rajaratnam tried to disguise those tips, but the government showed that he got illegal, material, nonpublic information by illegal means, and used it to make tens of millions in criminal gains.

I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we confuse or encourage those who fight this war for us to forget that best sense of ourselves. Through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss, we are always Americans, and different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us.

If a conservative majority on the Supreme Court eventually strikes down the individual mandate, it won’t change this reality. It will simply delay our day of reckoning as we keep trying to rationalize the mishmash that is our private/public health-care system. Like it or not, collective provision will always be central to any humane health-care system. Our competitors understand that. The sooner we do, the better.

The lesson of all this is that one’s sense of possibilities — and proprieties — is shaped by what we know, and often do not know, about history. The regnant ideology within the Obama administration and among congressional Democrats is reactionary liberalism, the conviction that whatever government programs exist should forever exist because they always have existed. That is, as baby boomers, in their narcissism — or perhaps solipsism; or both — understand “always.”

Presidents lead by offering a vision for the country rooted in certain principles, not by promising a technocracy that runs on “data.” Mr. Romney’s highest principle seems to be faith in his own expertise. More immediately for his Republican candidacy, the debate over ObamaCare and the larger entitlement state may be the central question of the 2012 election. On that question, Mr. Romney is compromised and not credible. If he does not change his message, he might as well try to knock off Joe Biden and get on the Obama ticket.